It is counted needle point. My parents blocked it and I blocked it again but it still ended up a bit slanted, so I thought it would work best as a pillow and wanted to show how I did it.
I made a backing with a button opening. I did use some interfacing along the button and button hole edges to make it more stable.
I used a piece of white flannel to line the piece of embroidery, and layered the embroidery and backing with wrong sides together,
And stitched around the edge of the embroidery, first with a straight stitch and then a zig-zag stitch to secure the edges. I used a walking foot on my machine to help with the sewing.
I cut out the shape close to the stitching.
While it was at this stage I cut out two pieces of fabric the same shape to make a pillow form for the inside (I stitched around the piece with right sides together, leaving a small opening, turned it right side out, stuffed it and stitched the opening closed using the sewing machine, enclosing the raw edges). I stuffed the pillow form with some leftover wool quilt batting that I pulled apart.
To finish the edges I made a piece of bias binding with the same backing fabric using this method. I used a 12" square piece of fabric to make about 46" of 2+1/2" wide bias binding, that I pressed in half before stitching it around the pillow. I didn't pull on the bias binding while sewing it down (again using a walking foot on the machine). I joined the ends of the bias binding on a 45 degree angle and stitched them together - this takes a bit of pinning and checking before sewing to make sure the binding ends up the right length. I stitched the binding down on the back by hand.
I am really happy with how it turned out. You can't tell that it is not perfectly oval. The cushion is about 8"x10".
All the best!♥︎
